THE NEW YORKER sponds roughly to the high eights on the Richter scale. The great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, for example, was a VII. Starting on December 16, 1811, and extending through the fol- lowing February, the New Madrid Seismic Zone experienced at least three earthquakes that are rated XI and one that is rated XII. In between, and for months afterward, there were almost constant smaller shocks. Samuel Mitchill, who was a professor of natu- ral history and a senator from New York, collected eyewitness reports of the earthquakes, and told of a Dr. Robertson, living in nearby St. Genevieve, who recorded more than five hundred tremors and "then ceased to note them any more, because he became weary of the task." In the western third of North Amer- ica, the convoluted folds of the earth's surface and its fractured geologic structure tend to absorb the seismic energy of an earthquake. Even an 8.5 earthquake in Los Angeles, say, would fade by the time it reached San Fran- cisco, some four hundred miles away. But in the eastern two-thirds of the continent the same energy travels more easily. Below the New Madrid Seismic Zone lies a deeply buried rift in the continental plate, a weakened spot where the earth's crust once started to pull apart. The rift is under stress from tectonic forces. A trough above the rift has, over millions of years, filled with gravel and sand. During those 1811-12 earthquakes, water mingled with the soft substrate and turned it into some- thing resembling quicksand-a process called liquefaction. Seismic waves moved up through the mixture and through the solid slab that is the sur- face of the eastern two-thirds of the continent. The earthquake, first felt in New Madrid on December 16th, dis- turbed Washington, D.C., more than eight hundred miles away. According to Mitchill, "a gentleman standing in his chamber at his desk and writing, in the third story of a brick house, upon the Capitol Hill, suddenly perceived his body to be in motion, vibrating back- ward and forward, and producing diz- ziness " Tremors were also reported as far away as Boston and northern Can- ada. Judge James Witherell, of Michi- gan, told Mitchill that Indians living on an island in a lake outside Detroit saw the waters of the lake appear to "tremble and boil like a great pot over a hot fire; and immediately a vast num- ber of large tortoises rose to the surface, and swam rapidly to the shore, where they were taken for food" An told, tremors were felt over an area of a million square miles-half of the Unit- ed States. There is no lack of firsthand reports from New Madrid itself, for nearly everyone there survived. Understand- ably, the accounts vary according to the place where the witness was shortly after 2 A.M. on December 16th, when the first shock hit, but all the witnesses speak of feeling terror and nausea as the earth heaved, and describe the earth being torn apart, the elements min- gling in a frightening way, and hear- ing sharp noises and rumbling ones as the earth spewed sulfurous gases, sand, and coal. The air, thick and malodor- ous, was colored by flames from small cabins collapsing into hearth fires. The Mississippi River roiled and roared, swallowing the sandy bluffs as they fell into it, running against the normal current as it rushed to spread back into new holes and crevices, creating water- falls where they had never been. A comprehensive summary of eyewitness accounts, collected by Timothy Flint, was published in Boston in 1826. Flint wrote: The shock of these earthquakes. . . must have equalled in their terrible heavings of the earth, any thing of the kind that has been recorded.... Whole tracts were plunged Into the bed of the river. The grave-yard at New Madrid, with all its sleeping tenants, was precipitated into the bend of the stream Most of the houses were thrown down. Large lakes... were made in an hour. Other lakes were drained . . . and when the water disappeared a stra- tus of sand. . . was left in its place. The trees split in the midst, lashed one with another, and are still visible over great tracts of country, Inclining in every direc- tion and in every angle to the earth and the horizon. They described the undula- tion of the earth as resembling waves, increasing in elevation as they advanced, and when they had attained a certain fear- ful height, the earth would burst, and vast volumes of water, and sand, and pit-coal were discharged, as high as the tops of the trees. I have seen a hundred of these chasms, which remained fearfully deep, al- though in a very tender alluvial soil, and after a lapse of seven years. Whole districts were covered with white sand, so as to become uninhabitable. The water at first covered the whole country.... The birds themselves lost all power and disposition to fly, and retreated to the bosoms of men. . . . A fe"\\y persons sunk in . . . chasms, and were providentially extricated. One person died of affright. . . . A bursting of the earth just below the village of New Madrid arrested this mighty stream in its course, and caused a reflux of its waves, by which in a little time a great number of boats were swept 77 GET AWAYlHE \VYNDHAlVl WAY. Nestled between Georgetown and the White House, right on Pennsylvania Avenue lIes the Wyndham Bnstol Hotel. 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